The chain of knuckleballers

In fact, since 1908, when Eddie Cicotte made it to the major leagues for good, there has been at least one pitcher carrying the knuckleball banner in the big leagues every year – and that’s even ignoring the pitchers who only lasted 3 or 4 years in the majors. The chain of “star” knucklers is quite interesting, actually. When you look closely at it, you see that everytime one knuckleballer would retire, the next one would almost immediately take his place. It’s as if the baton was being passed from one grizzled, retiring veteran to a young, fresh-faced kid every two decades or so. And, depending on the years that you choose to demark the eras, you can even find a second chain, staggering the first. They’re both quite interesting.

Trying to figure out if this is a “Highlander” “There can be only one” kind of thing, or if it’s more of a one-old-mage-having-his-lifeforce-stolen-by-an-apprentice, Fistindantilus-Raistlin kind of thing, with the “staggering” lar refers to being akin to Dalamar’s somewhat lesser ascendance (which makes Dalamar Tom Candiotti, I guess).

Don’t look at me like that. I’m already married. I don’t need to pretend I’m not a hopeless loser anymore.

Now, I have to go down into the basement to get the Dragonlance books out of the box and read the whole thing…again. I hope that the cover art of Laurana, Goldmoon, and Kitiara still make me feel kind of tingley.

I think I like Alan’s best. The Slayer makes much more sense. Niekro didn’t behead Wynn when he was brought up and Hough didn’t kill Wilhelm to get his spot in the bigs. The natural progression of old to young fits the Slayer really well.

Of course, none of these guys are 18 year old girls…

(and, Wooden, Wilbur Wood was mentioned… he just didn’t get highlighted because his career didn’t create a natural border-point)

@Chris
My ex-husband thought there was something “wrong with me” because I love fantasy novels/role playing games, sci-fi, and baseball.
He was right. There is something wrong with me, but that wasn’t it.
And I will buy season tickets to any team that has a knuckleballer that looks like Adrian Paul.

I have never commented before, but the above analogy forced me to comment so that I can claim that that might have been the nerdiest reference in the history of baseball. Is it sad that I totally understood it?